Anyway
by GeoffreyF
Summary: Arthur helps Merlin realise something about his destiny. This is quite impressive, since Arthur doesn't know the first thing about it.


**Warning: Cavities.**

Anyway

Sometimes, I have to remind myself how lucky I am.

I mean, yes, luck is not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when I think of my life. Drudgery and scrubbing brushes and sorcery and Arthur, when I'm feeling sorry for myself. My mother and Gaius and magic and Arthur, when I'm not. But luck? No. Luck has always passed me by.

Except it hasn't really. I'm so used to my destiny being a curse and a nightmare that I hardly ever remember that it needn't be.

I mean, I know my destiny supposedly leads to a free and prosperous Albion and a bunch of other important things, but it always seems so far off, so unattainable. Meanwhile I have the hard work and the slog of keeping my secret and saving Arthur every other week; I'm so used to it I sometimes forget about my destiny altogether. And the good things it's brought me. I got to ride a _dragon_, for goodness' sake.

"Merlin," says Arthur, and I start. Arthur smiles indulgently. "You were miles away," he says, yawning hugely.

"Um," is all I can say in reply. I can hardly deny it.

Arthur laughs. Another example of me being a hopeless servant, I suppose. I cast my mind back for what we were talking about, but it's slipped my memory. We're on a hunt, taking a mid-afternoon break, I know that much, but that doesn't help; we talk about all sorts of things on hunts. Arthur rolls his eyes at me; he can see that I'm completely clueless.

"Where were you?" he says sleepily.

"Um," I say again, intelligently. I can't tell the truth, of course, but really. Sometimes I think, if I were Arthur, I'd be even more horrible to my idiot of a servant than he is.

Arthur nods his head as if I said something worthwhile. He wasn't really listening, of course. An idea forms.

"I was appreciating my situation in life," I say experimentally, "and reflecting on the things that aren't so bad." I await the inevitable "_Mer_-lin", but ...

Arthur's eyes are closed. Of course. He's fast asleep.

"Clotpole," I mutter. I have a lot of other epithets I use for Arthur, many of them far less kind. But I have special liking for this one; I stumbled on just the right mix of contempt and tolerant affection that day in the stables – how, I can't imagine.

Well, since he's just lying there ...

"You know," I tell his sleeping form matter-of-factly, "I don't have it so bad."

Arthur sleeps. He's snoring a bit.

"In fact, sometimes I think I've got it better than you do." As soon as this comes out of my mouth, I wonder where on earth it came from. I don't think that at all; as if Arthur could possibly be worse off than me. I mean, he's king, for crying out loud. But what the hell. I go with it.

"At least I have a mother, who loves me. And Gaius, who is as good as a father. One who wants the best for me."

Arthur shifts in his sleep.

"And I've got you," I say, surprising myself some more, "and you are, all things considered, not the worst master I could have had."

Well, this, I suppose, is true. I could have been Uther's servant.

"I mean, for a prince, you are really quite decent, some of the time. I don't suppose that's particularly common, among your sort of people."

Arthur seems to stir a little at that; a reflex, perhaps, even when he's sleeping. He doesn't like it when I disrespect the nobility.

"Well, it's not," I tell him crossly. "Most of you are completely awful. Arrogant and rude and ... well, you're those things too, I suppose."

Arthur grunts and rolls over a little.

"But ... well, you're worth ten of them, Arthur, a hundred, really." I stop, as I realise what I just said. What was that? A hundred's a bit excessive, surely – it's only Arthur. I don't know why that came out.

"Um," I say, again, ridiculously, because it's not as though Arthur heard me.

Arthur's still asleep, but it's no good. I mean, sometimes I tell Arthur what a great king he'll be, and how much I believe in him, when he really needs to hear it. But this? I don't think Arthur needs my trust in him to get him through an afternoon nap.

I can feel myself blushing, and decide this is getting stupid. I'm managing to embarrass myself in front of an Arthur who isn't even conscious, and is thus even more oblivious than usual. I click my tongue in irritation, and stand up. I check the water skins, which aren't really empty, but I go to fill them anyway just to have something productive to do.

When I get back from the stream, Arthur's awake.

"Where on earth did you wander off to?" he asks.

I hold up the skins for answer, and Arthur rolls his eyes.

"Leaving me completely defenceless."

"Um," I say. It must be some sort of illness.

"Oh, never mind, Merlin," he says, shaking his head at me. "Come on; we still haven't caught anything much."

I follow him, no more clumsily than usual, thank goodness. It doesn't take Arthur long to locate a doe, placidly chewing leaves in a tiny clearing. He instructs me with his idiotic hand signals to stay where I am and shut up. Since I'm good for little else on these things, this isn't very hard.

Arthur draws his bow, slowly and carefully. He's about to let go when my boot finds a particularly noisy twig to crack, and the doe's ears prick up. She looks straight at us and darts away – but not fast enough. Arthur's arrow catches her in her hind leg, and she collapses in agony.

Arthur shoots me a furious look before starting forward. He draws his knife to put the doe out of her misery, but something else gets to the doe before he does. A faun. Its dappled coat shimmers in the late afternoon sun as it pokes its dying mother with its nose; it can't know what's going on. I bite back a cry; I hate hunting enough as it is, but I hate these kinds of things most of all.

I hear Arthur groan softly. You don't kill a mother doe, not with a faun this young; it's part of the hunters' unwritten code. Sometimes, like this, it happens by accident, but no one ever feels good about it. The faun, becoming concerned, nudges its mother more insistently; she can only moan in answer.

It skitters away when Arthur approaches. The doe's wound is far too serious to heal, and that means that the faun, in all likelihood, will starve. Arthur tries not to look at it as he thrusts his knife into the mother's throat. He knows that, while her suffering is over, the faun's has only just begun.

Arthur slings the doe across his shoulders and comes back towards me. I can see that he's feeling terrible.

"Merlin," he says, seeing me. "Utterly useless, as usual. Perhaps you can find it in yourself to carry the skins, although I know it's probably too much for your delicate strength."

I know he's only saying this because he's angry with himself about the doe, but I've been out on this hunt all day now and my tolerance is worn down.

"Shut up, Arthur," I say. "You're the one who murdered its mother."

I'm leaning down to pick up the water skins when I feel the point of a sword in my back.

"Don't forget your place, Merlin." He jabs the sword against my back – not enough to break the skin, but enough to hurt – and then trudges off towards Camelot. It isn't far; Arthur hates having to hunt so close to home nowadays, but he can't just go galloping off anywhere in search of prey; he is king, after all.

I stomp along behind, silently raging at him. An hour ago I was waxing lyrical about how wonderful it can be to have a destiny like mine, but now all I can think of is that I'm bound to this irritating chunk of royal self-satisfied condescension, and I will be forever. Polishing his boots, changing his sheets, and traipsing after him on these godforsaken hunts.

My distraction catches up with me, and I trip and fall headfirst into the thin covering of leaves on the path. Arthur, up ahead, ignores me. Prat.

By the time we get back to the castle, I'm seething with resentment. I know Arthur didn't mean it, that he was taking his own frustration out on me. It happens all the time. But there are times when it's just all a little much.

"Take this to the kitchens, Merlin," Arthur orders me. He sounds calmer, but I'm not, so I grab the deer from his shoulders without looking at him and march off towards the servants' doorway.

By the time I'm bringing up his dinner, though, much of my anger is gone. Most of what's left is directed towards myself: I'm the one, after all, who couldn't give a little understanding to someone who had just orphaned a week-old faun. Plus, it's Arthur, and looking after him is my job and my destiny. As I was telling myself earlier in the day, of all possible destinies, this one I can endure.

"Oh, there you are, Merlin," he says when I open the door. "I was wondering."

"Arthur," I say, so he will know I'm not angry with him anymore.

"Sit down," he says absent-mindedly, and, after setting his dinner on the table, I perch awkwardly on the end of his bed.

Arthur finds whatever it is he was looking for and settles himself in for dinner. He looks at me for a moment, and then seems to remember why he wanted me to sit down.

"Right. Merlin. I just wanted to say not to worry about what happened earlier. You know, with the faun." He sounds utterly unconcerned about it, focused instead on a stubborn bean in his stew. "I'm not angry, or anything."

"No, it's fine," I say quickly, because, for Arthur, this is really quite an admission. Still, I can't help adding, "I'm used to it," on the end. After all, it wasn't really an apology.

Arthur glances up at me and smiles briefly. "That's all."

I get up to go.

"You know, Merlin," he says, as I reach the door, "I'm really quite lucky to have you. All the servants I had before you would have grovelled and whimpered and really been quite unbearable." He skewers a slice of pumpkin and examines it meditatively. "Really," he tells it idly, "I think you're worth a hundred of them."

I glance at him sharply, but he's still focused on his food. I catch a twinkle in his eye, though. He can't hide that, not from me.

"Thank you," I say, and he looks at me quizzically, as though he can't remember what he just said. Then he shoos me away.

As I close the door, I realise the truth about my destiny. If I learned tomorrow that the whole thing had been cooked up by Gaius and Kilgharrah as some sort of giant prank, or if the druids had come up with it one delirious night when they'd eaten the wrong sort of mushrooms, or if Morgana turned herself in on bended knee and promised to bring all the magic-users under Arthur's rule, I know what I'd do. I'd keep protecting Arthur anyway, because there's nothing else in the world I'd rather do.


End file.
